KF: Right. When you start a dynasty, it's basically its own entity. So anything that happens over the course of the years of your dynasty are unique to that dynasty. Now if you start a new dynasty with a new roster, then you'll be starting with that base and then you'll use that as a base for [up to] twenty-five years.

IGN: You have the option of changing player names and jersey names?

KF: Yes. You can create any player you want from scratch. Give them any name, any attribute you want. We do limit you somewhat on the NFL players, just because of our NFL license, we're not allowed to change all of the attributes, but we can change some stuff.

IGN: Can you give us some examples of the classic teams in the game?

KF: The '72 Dolphins, the '79 Steelers, the '89 Niners, all the ones you would expect. There are about thirty classic teams in the game.

IGN: Is there going to be any kind of online stat tracking online for Fever?

KF: In this version there's no Dynasty support online. But there are user profiles available, actually there are rankings for players online. So you can see how people are rated in terms of what difficulty level they're playing and a whole pile of NFL stats. So how are they doing on passing yards, rushing yards, total yards, sacks, that kind of stuff.

IGN: Will there be any tracking for people who opt out in the middle of online games?

KF: We don't penalize people necessarily in the rankings for unexpected disconnects, but you can see the number of disconnects. Just because we can't tell why somebody disconnected. Was it their fault? Did they purposely disconnect? Was it their system? We're basically agnostic on that. We don't care. We can't tell for sure. All we can do is note that you unexpectedly disconnected. And if it's your service, well sorry, you're going to get a lot of disconnect notices. So they will be able to see the number of times you've unexpectedly left a game. So hopefully users can make up their minds about who's a good risk to play against and who isn't. We just want to give them as much information as we can to make sure that their online experience is good.

Hearst with a burst.

IGN: Are there any plans for online leagues?

KF: It won't be available for this version, but users are certainly welcome to go up and organize them themselves. But it's not something we're doing through the service this year. It's certainly something on our list for future versions.

IGN: Are there a lot of new animations or will Fever look similar to last year?

KF: No, we've put quite a few new ones in. We worked on adding some more variety to tackles and adding new celebrations, transitional moves. Basically just trying to make the game look as smooth and realistic as possible. So, wherever we needed new animations to do that, we went ahead and added them.

IGN: New commentary?

KF: Oh, tons of new commentary. We've got Kevin Calabro doing play-by-play and Ron Pitts doing color. Yeah, we've added tons and tons of new audio. We basically rewrote our audio engine. It's much more intelligent about commenting during the play. So as the play develops, Kevin Calabro will jump in and say what formation you're in or if a guy is doing a special move or whatever's happening on the field at the time. And then far more intelligent commentary in the post play.

IGN: What is your favorite thing about NFL Fever 2003?

KF: Oh, which of my children do I like best? I think the My Plays addition in the play ticker is probably the most exciting in terms of being able to create your own plays and mark favorite plays. That and, as far as new functionality, my favorite is the play editor. It opens the game up in such an interesting way to everyone. As far as on field, I think the better pass defense and the defensive hot routes, especially bump and run, has added a new dimension to playing defense as well. I think both of those are really exciting.

IGN: Is there any one thing that you wanted to have in there that you couldn't put in there this year?

KF: Oh, there must be 500 things. That's the beauty of sports games, though, 'cause we've already started work on the next version. This year's slip is next year's great feature. It's an exciting time to be working on a game like this. The technology gives us so many opportunities that we just haven't had in the past. The online play is incredibly exciting. The voice communicator is a lot of fun. And just being able to play [online]--and we've been playing games for a while now and it's a lot of fun.

IGN: How do you feel you stack up against the competition this year?

KF: Well, we haven't seen their final versions so I think you're in a better position to talk about that than we are. I think we'll be very competitive with both of them. We started with a very solid base this year, which wasn't something we had last year. We've also done a very good job of picking out the features users most requested and demanded in football games. I think we've done a good job of improving the gameplay in compelling ways. Also adding new customizations such as the play editor and the uniform editor and so on. And online play as well. I think we're really delivering on things the users told us they want. Madden and NFL 2K are pretty tough competitors, so, luckily they are getting some of the same feedback. It's just a matter of who has been able to execute on that. We're pretty confident.